APC was the last thing I did. I didn’t entirely see a point in doing it before I finished all the requirements and it cut into my time for working on the requirements. But as a result I got ASA a few months later than I would have, but they had APC every single month in 2018 through I think May because the demand was so high, so it’s not like there was lack of opportunity for APC.
They’ve gone back & forth on that. When I was taking Modules 1-5 I think you had to finish the whole thing in two years. But then the SOA was all upset that college students weren’t working on the modules in college. I pointed out on AO in a thread that included FAP Committee folk that college students were probably afraid of the two year deadline. Shortly after my AO comment they rescinded the deadline. (No idea if my comment made a difference, but it’s possible.)
It was later reinstated, but I think I was somehow grandfathered.
It was 2 years to finish it, but you could extend for an additional 1 I think, but I think you didn’t lose credit if you finished through IA at all. Then at some point they changed it that you would actually lose credit for IA if you didn’t finish FA in I think that 3 year period.
My APC was on a Monday and I took the preceding Friday off work and flew out to the city and partied with friends in that city all weekend with my employer having picked up the tab for the flight and I stayed with my friends until Sunday night. I was definitely taking advantage of the particular city as I basically only had to pay for my alcohol Friday & Saturday nights.
I hung out with my uncle, aunt and one of my cousins who I hadn’t seen in over a decade and cousin went from like a 4 year old kid who didn’t really remember me at all to pretty much an adult. was awesome seeing them, but now it’s 3 years later and we haven’t done that since.
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See this timeline (yes, I got info about how this developed 2006-2009): College Credit for Exams: a History - #10 by meep
Originally, it was just the CIA. Around June 2008, the SOA Board asked the CIA to wait a bit, and then it kind of snowballed with the CAS, etc., and then August 2009 it all became public and then collapsed immediately thereafter.
So the CIA went ahead with what it had already been working on since 2006. [yes, I need to extend the timeline a bit, but it was originally from December 2009]
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It may or may not water down credentials (I tend towards the former tbh but not the point here).
My greater concern is that it’s going to hammer diversity.
When I talk about diversity here, I am not referring to skin colour or presence of Y-chromosome, I am referring to diversity of thought.
I have always viewed the greatest strength of the actuarial profession as it being open to all manner of background. You can have an ActSci degree, Math degree or even Music degree and you can enter the profession as long as you can pass the relevant exams.
But but… I can hear proponents of uni credentialing this saying: “Nothing has changed on that front!”.
In theory, true but this will drive more budding actuaries towards ActSci degrees.
Those who haven’t yet made the decision to become actuaries after high school and go into some other degree will be less likely to want to become actuaries after they graduate. From the employer’s perspective, on one hand they have an ActSci degree holder with a bunch of exemptions (also needing less study support) and another with none. From the graduate’s perspective, the non-ActSci degree holder is starting maybe 4-5 exams behind his peers.
So where we will risk ending up is that the actuarial profession consists solely of those with ActSci degree, losing the diversity of backgrounds and thought which I have always viewed as the strength of the actuarial profession.
I see this happening in the UK environment where I currently work. Not entirely sure when the exemption system started but if I look at those who are > 10 years senior to myself, virtually nobody has an actuarial science degree.
If however, I look at the newer entrants, almost everyone:
- Has a UK education
- Went to a UK university actuarial program
- Sat for the IOA exams (or what’s left of them after hocking all the exemptions)
- Studying from the same study manual (ActED has a monopoly on this)
- With London Market working experience.
A level of insularity has crept into the UK Actuarial profession. Anyone not fitting the mould above is instantly deemed to be inferior.
I would hate to see FSA go the same way but hey ho… easier for the societies to make decisions without consulting those pesky members who just don’t get it.
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I wonder if your co-worker was referring to the old Course 2 Macroeconomics monograph.
Take a dry subject, present it in the most boring way ever, and throw in a lot of non-trivial typos just to see if the candidates are paying attention.
The teacher from Ferris Bueller was probably more entertaining.
Ah fun memories…
There is a whole timeline here, with respect to the fall of The Equitable UK, Lord Penrose’s report, and then the Morris Review of the UK actuarial profession. That’s all in the UK, obviously, but it spurred items on the U.S. side.
One of the findings in the Morris Review had something to do with a gap in actuarial education/knowledge so that the Equitable’s actuaries valued a 6% rate guarantee at zero. … Thus, university education?
It was picked up in CRUSAP:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060111040317/http://www.crusap.net/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130602015739/http://crusap.net/
I’m not going to dig out the specific language right now, but there was a huge non sequitur between “actuaries not keeping up with academic developments” and credentialing via universities, given nobody is going to give anybody straight out of university any major responsibility for anything. It’s the senior actuaries who need to be targeted…and they’re decades away from their own graduations.
In any case, the CAS, SOA, and AAA all picked up continuing education requirements after this, and the college credit stuff is only for minor items (VEE)… except for the UK exam credits they have been doing sub rosa.
Going back to the UK examples you have, the U.S. market is unlikely to have the same problem, due to our size in population & geography. I will leave it to Canadians to let us know if everybody is coming from Waterloo, working in Toronto, etc.
I would like to hear the opinion of the non-Canadian/non-U.S. members and candidates. That has been a growing part of SOA membership.
As per my earlier link, as of December 2020, there were 5,547 such SOA members, 18% of total membership.
As of December 2015, there were 3,939 such members, 15% of the SOA membership at the time.
I will note some of the CAEs are outside U.S./Canada:
https://www.soa.org/institutions/
Not this again.
I believe last time it was called FEM. Future Education Model or something. I always thought of it as Failed Education Model.
The thread is getting a bit long, but here’s some historical stuff:
Yes, it was FEM for the 2009 attempt. There was also the 1989 attempt and the 1970 attempt. I may missed some interim ones.
The Macroeconomics study note predated the existence of Course 2, but was also used on Course 2. I agree with your general description of it by the time Course 2 came into existence, but I really wasn’t kidding on my description of the errata. It was on double digit number of pages that they had reversed every single instance of the words “supply” and “demand”. (I assume a case of the “find and replace” feature gone horribly wrong.)
Now it’s possible that the number of pages where the words were reversed has grown with the many retellings of this story, but it was considerably more than just
Mercifully I had taken macroeconomics and still had my textbook when I took Course 2. I think I got about 1.5 pages into the study note when I said “screw it… how different can my textbook be?” and reviewed my textbook instead. Passed that sucker on my first attempt doing exactly what the SOA said not to do: using outside materials instead of the source materials.
For those on the webcast right now, you can see this was the exact wording of my question:
What, exactly, is different this time compared to the last 3 times the SOA tried to get such a program off the ground?
Is there any indication that either employers or members will not shoot this down again?
You should be able to see that in the Q&A box. [This is not how it was read out loud]
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I submitted a couple more questions:
What institutions has the SOA reached out to for the diversity opportunity?
Okay, I understand why the CAE actuarial science faculty would be interested in this, but what’s in it for the SOA?
Are you concerned that students with this sort of credit will be selected against by employers? Might employers be concerned the students cannot pass FSA-level exams and thus get fully credentialed?
I like this one:
-
Why is the SOA not offering the UEC for exam P?
- Probability courses are not typically under the control of the actuarial department at universities. In addition, Exam P serves as a screening device for both employers and candidates on future exam success.
But if you need to keep P out of the classroom to maintain its ability as a signaling device, doesn’t that imply the classroom is easier?
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Oh, sounds like more “clever ideas” from the SOA will be coming later this year.
OH JEEZ. [sorry guys, just reacting to something]
I do know about something coming from the SOA, but I doubt Ken Guthrie would talk about that, because it’s not Education-related.
Last year the SOA had a webinar for academics on proposed changes to the education system. The only proposed changes mentioned were changing STAM and LTAM to basic actuarial modeling and advanced actuarial modeling and placing more emphasis on predictive analytics.
Interestingly the subject of university based credit was not even mentioned,